Game Design: What Measure is a Mook?

I like the idea of having an army of minions in a game, and I’ve played a number of games that cater to that particular desire. Sometimes you get henchmen instead of proper minions, and henchmen require more work, but sometimes you get the good stuff — minions — innumerable, sycophantic, and expendable.

Death mages are a popular way of putting minions in the hands of the players, perhaps because it’s more difficult to feel bad about sending the undead to their doom. (Been there, done that.) Diablo 2, and Guild Wars Prophesiesand Factionsall have classes that specialize in producing cheap, expendable minions for serving all your decoy needs.

I’m of the opinion that minions need more love. It’s cool to summon warriors into the midst of battle, and they serve the dual purpose of slowing enemy advancement and dealing damage around. I love skeletons and zombies, but I feel there ought to be more kinds of minions. The fighters want to squish things and the wizards want to blow things up.

Fire and frost mages should be able to conjure up motes of fire (fire elementals?) and snowmen to mire their enemies, nature mages should be able to conjure up mud-men and bushmen (pardon the joke) to fight for them, and faerie mages should be able to conjure up swarms of tooth faeries to, um … extract teeth.